Your post title can be costing you search engine rank

I've written before about how important your headline, or title, is for getting people to read your post. Headlines and photos are the two main reasons people stop to read a post you have written.

But there is a technical side to titles as well.

You may have never noticed it before, but the title of your post appears in the "Title Bar" of your browser, at the very top of the program. Here is the Title Bar from a post I wrote for one of my other blogs, JPAC blog:

The problem is that the name of your blog appears first, then the title of your post. This is bad. Your post's title is the key information search engines are looking for. When it sees 200 posts that begin with "Your Blog Name," the search engine sometimes believes that all 200 posts are the same post...duplicated 200 times! Search engines hate duplicate posts and strongly penalize sites that have them.

Instead, your blog program should list the name of the post first, then the blog name:

When formatted this way, search engines immediately know they are dealing with a new post and are likely to promote the new post to the top of relevant searches.

For Typepad users, this change currently requires modifying the Advanced Templates which require the top tiered "Pro" account ($15/mo).

Comments

[Imke]

That makes a lot of sense. How do you modify the Advanced Templates in that way?

[Dawud Miracle]

Exactly. This is good advice and I recommend any blogger makes this change. It will change search engine rankings.

[Brian Brown]

IMKE, Typepad Hacks has the tutorial I use.